Highland Park. Twenty-eight whiskies.

Highland Park is near Kirkwall on Orkney and is the most northerly distillery in Scotland, closer to Oslo than to London. The name refers not to the Highlands but to High Park, the piece of land above the town where it began. According to tradition this was the work of Magnus Eunson, church officer and butcher by day, whisky smuggler by night, who hid his casks under the pulpit while the taxman searched his house.

Two things make the whisky. The house still malts part of the barley itself on its own floors, and dries it over peat from Hobbister Moor, eleven kilometres away. Because of the wind, hardly any trees grow on Orkney, so that peat consists not of decayed wood but of heather. That gives a smoke that is floral and sweet rather than medicinal, very different from Islay and far more subtle.

For the casks the house goes even further: it buys American and European oak itself, has casks made from it in Spain, which are then filled with oloroso for two years and afterwards go back empty to Orkney. No caramel is added; every colour in the bottle comes from the wood.

About a fifth of the malt is peated. That is precisely why the smoke is an undertone and never the leading role.